In the car ride there they recap the video and Chi-Lan mentions that the rancher saw lights. So, of course, Larry brings up extra-terrestrials and that maybe it was a UFO. Off to a great start already. They meet first with Chuck Zukowski who is billed as a UFO Expert. Chuck investigated this case when the rancher first found the cow and will be taking the team to the area.
Now they meet with the witness Manuel Sanchez who explains how he came across the cow when he was checking on them. They go tromping through the snow and he shows them where it was found and they start popping up various photos of the carcass.
Chi-Lan asks about the state the cow was in when it was found (Colorado, right? Oh...) Chuck explains how it appeared to have been gutted out, no debris, blood, markings, etc. Manuel is asked about anything out of the ordinary and says that in August he had seen some lights (Paulding?) A very slow moving light over the ridge I think he says (the darned music is pretty loud here)
The mystery deepened when it was mentioned that the carcass disappeared soon after. So Bill explains that the plan is to look for paranormal evidence such as unusual magnetic fields or traces of radiation. Not only that, they need to find what happened to the cow so they can test it for abnormalities.
Aright, so let's go right to the paranormal and start the Ground Sweep. They head out with an EMF detector and a Geiger counter (which they zeroized) They start their sweep at the tree where the calf was found. But they didn't find anything. So they start circling out around the tree and Larry gets a spike on the Geiger and Bill finds some bones. These were apparently two separate events because Bill calls it out as if the others are quite a distance away. Pretty exciting, which means we're at our first commercial break.
And we're back (Did you know all major Whirlpool appliances are 10% off?) Bill scoops up the bone and puts it in their evidence bag. And that seemed to be it for the Ground Sweep.
Bill goes after those darned skeptics and says that some of them believe that mutilations are hoaxes. But then how can they do that overnight without leaving any traces (sort of the argument behind crop circles, too) To see what it would take, they get veterinarian Amy Mason to come out and perform a mutilation. We are assured by Chi-Lan that the cow died of natural causes, that they registered their experiment, and that nothing would be wasted.
Thus reassured, we move to the Mutilation Replication Test or MRT. Since burn marks have been noticed occasionally, one of the tests will involve a cauterizer. Chi-Lan immediately says that we could see just how long it would take to do something like this. Not something someone could easily and quickly do. Nothing is mentioned that something like this could be done off-site and the carcass brought in, though. It looked pretty good apparently, but they quickly point out that it took forever and that you need an "electric source." He admits that people could have been out there all night, but that it wasn't very likely. As if to emphasize the point, they show a nice sunset scene and then show Amy still working using the light of a lantern. Didn't Manuel say he saw lights?
Amy is asked about a predator but counters with no bite or teeth marks or tracks or trails. Bill then wonders about it being a laser and as luck would have it, they had a laser with them. Wonder if it was the same one they were shining at the plane up in Michigan? They try the laser, which seems like it would also take a long time and wasn't doing a very good job of it, they claim.
So if it wasn't a laser or cauterizer, maybe it was something like a knife or scalpel. I guess that would have been option one earlier on, but then what about the blood flow? Burn marks? Amy concludes by saying because the carcass was so cleaned out that a person wouldn't be able to do that. And so much for the MRT.
They come up with the idea of animal attacks. To test THIS "theory" they will leave the carcass out overnight and see if predators or scavengers come in. Chi-Lan jumps in out of the blue with a little factoid about San Luis having five reports of UFO sightings since 1996 and that the rancher saw lights in the sky before he found the last mutilated cattle (isn't cattle the plural?) This makes her think there is a correlation between what's seen in the sky and what they find on the ground. What that has to do with the current topic of scavengers and predators attacking the carcass, I have no idea.
The Night Investigation starts (every good show needs a Night Investigation, right?) They aim the four stationary cameras so they catch the sky as well as just the fields, and they go "green" I'll fore go the Kermit jokes here. While the cameras roll, Chi-Lan monitors them and Larry and Bill go walking through the brush and fields. Immediately they heighten the drama by hinting that something fell. They go take a look, we get a "What is that?" and a commercial for The Lottery Ticket.
After the break, Chi-Lan continues to harp on about five UFO reports since 1996. Meanwhile Bill and Larry come across some live cows and talk about how, when they get close, the cows scatter. Well, if you can call turning their head and taking three steps to the right "scattering." But, it's enough to raise the question of how anyone can get close enough to the cows to do the mutilations because they are so scared of humans.
Not having witnessed a fresh mutilation that night they give up on the night investigation. Apparently while this was going on, they had dumped the carcass somewhere and put a camera on it to see if any scavengers took it. That footage will be checked in the light of day.
The footage revealed a bird feeding off the carcass which somehow gives him the insight to make the leap to a Bloat Test. Another "theory" about the precise incisions is a bloating that ruptures the skin surgically.
They obtain a rubber bladder and a chamois. Wait, what happened to doing exact replications and only accepting things if all circumstances matched identically? Need I bring up the ghost writing case or Raystown Ray? Hmmmm, need I? I think I need to.
What they do is cover the bladder with the chamois which represents the cow hide. Yup, identical match, treated leather substituting for fresh cow skin. I'll buy that. A frame is built around the bladder/hide combination to keep the skin down during the expansion so that pressure builds up behind it.
They start to inflate the bladder/balloon which presses out on the skin and immediately we start to see two sets four and five holes on the left side of the screen. Were these precuts to help things along?
Without letting the experiment finish, we go back to the Situation Room and get a full recap which I won't bore you with. Finally they show the balloon really rip the leather. Even with the initial holes I see a tearing area that doesn't look quite surgical yet this is enough to close the case as explainable by bloating.
Chi-Lan then ruins things by saying that even the calf that they used for the MRT which had only been dead for 24 hours had signs of bloating; as pointed out by Amy. Why didn't they test this bloat theory with a real carcass? If they will not declare a case explained because they can't replicate writing, or Phoenix Lights, or Lake Monsters EXACTLY, how can they then declare this one explained by doing an offsite test with different materials? Consistency folks, you need consistency. I'm not advocating aliens behind the mutilations at all, but I do question how they can declare this explained when it wasn't replicated exactly...given their failure to call similar cases explained that were replicated no less convincingly.
The bone they found? It was analyzed by Dr Thomas Wade, the director of Zooarchaeological Studies at UCLA (whom A brief search turned up no evidence of) and it came back normal. At least it did turn up to be a cow bone.
Discussion and commenting on this case is taking place here:
http://www.skepticalviewer.com/forums/fact-or-faked/s01e06-the-caretakercutter/page-1
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